Myself and three other members of Veterans For Peace, Ellen Davidson, Tarak Kauff and Chris Smiley, will be speaking in Texas in a couple of weeks. We’ll be in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston if anyone is able to join us. Thanks so much to the incredible Leslie Harris for making this speaking tour happen.

Veterans For Peace Palestine/Israel Delegation Texas Tour: Walls of Racism and Oppression From Texas to Palestine and Beyond

A nine-person Veterans For Peace delegation visited Palestine/Israel earlier this year, where they met with Palestinian popular resistance leaders as well as members of the Knesset. They participated in nonviolent direct action and witnessed the resiliency, solidarity, creativity and courage of the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation and the settlements that steal their land, water and other resources. Photographer Ellen Davidson, former State Dept official and USMC Captain Matthew Hoh, former US Army paratrooper Tarak Kauff, and filmmaker Chris Smiley are touring Texas to tell us what they observed firsthand, using dramatic video clips and photos of this eventful trip, soon to be made into a documentary series. Their experience helped them see how Palestinian struggles relate to those of oppressed communities in Texas and beyond. Click here to see a trailer for the documentary series.

I also wanted to share an interview I did last week, with RT, on veteran suicides in the United States, the relationship of suicides to being in combat, and the further connection to moral injury/guilt. It’d be nice to get the chance to talk on an American network about this topic…

Additionally, here are three podcasts of radio programs I’ve done over the last month with three people I greatly admire.

The first is with award winning journalist Dave Maresh, who I have been very fortunate to know, along with his wife Amy, for seven or eight years now. Dave’s experiences are pretty unparalleled. He’s now in some form of non-retirement in New Mexico where he hosts a daily hourly radio program on KSFR, Here and There with Dave Marash. It’s one of the few podcasts I subscribe to and so it was pretty incredible to now have been one of his guests.

I was on with Blase Bonpane on his World Focus radio program earlier this month as well. I was also on with Blase again this past week, but I’ll do a separate blog post for that interview. Blase’s life story is heroic and amazing, he was a priest who defied the Catholic Church by practicing and living the liberation theology taught by Jesus Christ. My first interview, with a transcript, is with him here:

Finally, I was on with Army veteran Nate Bethea. I’ve known Nate for several years now. He’s been honest and forthright about his military service and his time during and after the wars, and his outspokenness on societal issues in the United States has earned him my deepest respect and gratitude, even though it has delivered him the scorn and vitriol of many from the Right Wing, including men with whom he served in combat. Nate now co-runs a podcast called What a Hell of a Way to Die. It’s a program by military veterans that takes on larger and broader issues from a socialist/leftist perspective. It’s fantastic.

President Trump is upsetting, yet let us remember he is nothing different than what we have experienced before. We have had less loutish and buffoonish presidents, but Trump’s lack of eloquence from the podium should not let us forget that the worst thing he has done as President has been to continue President Obama’s mass killing of brown skinned and Muslim people in seven different countries.

What is different from the past is the absence of highly visible principled resistance to Trump, which is not to be confused with the #Resistance that exists for the sake and well being of the Democratic Party and favors outrage over Trump’s words as opposed to his actions. Tellingly, it his actions overseas that make Trump not very different from the war and money interests of the Democrats and it is where the honest and necessary resistance to his killing is most lacking among those who influence policy, media and culture, and the American people.

From today’s entry on Carl Bunin’s Today in Peace and Justice History:

September 19, 1952

“The United States prevented Charlie Chaplin, the British director, actor and producer, from returning to his Hollywood home until he had been investigated by Immigration Services.

He had been on the FBI’s Security Index since 1948, and was one of over 300 people blacklisted by Hollywood film studios.

Chaplin was unable to work after refusing to cooperate during his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Informed that he would not necessarily be welcomed back, he retorted, “I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ were president,” and surrendered his U.S. re-entry permit in Switzerland. ”

Chaplin has a special place for me as it is his speech from The Great Dictator thatI ask all young men and women who are thinking of joining the military to watch.

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes – men who despise you – enslave you – who regiment your lives – tell you what to do – what to think and what to feel! Who drill you – diet you – treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate – the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

“Don’t give yourselves to brutes!” Chaplin thunders. It was a mistake I made and it is important we try and keep others from making the same, giving their lives to brutes.

Chaplin was a man who followed his principles, his values and what his life’s experience had taught him were true and meaningful, and he didn’t give in, despite the ridicule, the loss of money and the danger of being unpopular. Trump is a brute who only wants to be liked and will kill thousands and hurt millions more in order to be an idol to his twitter followers and his sychophants on Fox News or in the WallStreet Journal.

After Trump’s speech to the UN General Assembly, I saw an expert on CNN, she was a former Obama State Department person and is now at a think tank in Washington, D.C., her reason for being upset with Trump’s remarks were that he hurts American credibility. Not that his policies of violence are vile, destructive and counter-productive, but that his words are not tactful or timed correctly and so American “credibility” is hurt. Nowhere on the mainstream television today or in the decision making circles of Washington, DC is a man or woman like Charlie Chaplin.

Through a discussion over email I recently became aware of a quote by Leslie Gelb, the man who helped write the Pentagon Papers for Robert McNamara, spent decades at the New York Times, ran the Council of Foreign Relations and who is now their President Emeritus.

Gelb explained his support for the Iraq War, and by extension the support of other “experts” in the foreign policy communities for the United States’ decades of organized murder that we call war, this way:

“[his] initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility.”

World Beyond War’s #NoWar2017 conference is next weekend, September 22-24, in Washington, DC at American University. A concurrent event will be held in Berlin, Germany, where I was fortunate to take part from last year. I’ve put up this short video to explain why I am going to DC to attend the conference:

There is still space available at the conference and I really encourage folks to attend if they can, as the list of speakers is truly and absolutely fantastic:

The fellowship and solidarity that occurs at events like this is why I keep going to these sorts of things, besides, of course, for the opportunity to learn, grow and develop as a peacemaker. I always come away from a conference like this stronger, more balanced and greatly inspired, because of the company I have just been with.

Information on the conference can be found here. It’s a pay what you can event, and there is a ride share and lodging message board to help you find a way to DC and then find a place to stay once you are there.

If you can’t join us in DC next weekend, the conference will be live-streamed via World Beyond War’s Facebook page, so please attend virtually, and, if you are able, please consider providing a donation so that World Beyond War can continue to do its work (I’m an advisory board member).

“…Owens was not impressed by what she found on Capitol Hill. Most of the senators and representatives she met didn’t seem to care who was behind 9/11. “They just didn’t want to be seen as voting against the 9/11 families. So they would vote yes for it, and then try to sabotage it behind the scenes. . . . Washington is an ugly place.”

For September 11th, I was a guest on RT UK’s show Going Underground. The host, Afshin Rattansi, is terrific. I’ve pasted below my appearance from the last time I was on his show, almost three years ago:

I’ve done a large number of tv and radio interviews the last few weeks about the American wars in the Middle East. I’ve been focusing a lot of my attention on the men who are behind these policies, Generals Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, as I believe understanding their world views, how they view themselves and their resulting intentions are crucial in understanding how American war policy evolved and, under Donald Trump, is different from the war policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Forgive the apparent vanity in sharing so many videos of myself right now, but I think I touch on a different aspect of the wars, and for that matter American society, in each of the following videos.

Comments on Syria, the world view of White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, and the lineage of American wars and use of airstrikes. From the National Press Club, August 2017, aired via CSPAN:

The full news conference, that included Christie Edwards, John Kiriakou, David Swanson and Norman Solomon can be found here.

From Democracy Now, the morning after President Trump’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy announcement, August 2017. I focus predominantly on the connection between our wars abroad and our wars at home, and the influence Generals Mattis, Kelly and McMaster have on President Trump. A transcript can be found here.

In this Real News interview, I discuss the influence of money on the wars, particularly the circular motion of Congress appropriating money for war, the money going to defense companies, defense companies funding think tanks and lobbyists, and those think tanks and lobbyists than justifying further defense spending, and the wars, to Congress. This was taped the day of President Trump’s Afghanistan and Pakistan speech in August 2017.

If you have any doubt how much money an extra 4,000 troops sent to Afghanistan generates in additional war spending, understand that we spend roughly $4 million dollars per soldier per year in Afghanistan. We have 11,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, soon to be 15,000, and we spend $44 billion dollars, in direct costs only, on the war. This spending, as well as the roughly $30 billion we are spending on the wars in Syria and Iraq is independent from the base defense budget, which the US Senate is currently considering. [This year’s budget is $700 billion, which is about $40 billion MORE than Donald Trump proposed with his $54 billion increase in the defense budget last spring, which it is important to remember is only 3% greater than what President Obama proposed to spend; President Obama having spent more money on the military than any other president since FDR and World War Two, in inflation adjusted dollars.]

The United States also utilizes 2.5 contractors for each soldier in Afghanistan. So the amount of money to be made on even a small troop increase is phenomenal, as the troop increase comes alongside increased air and artillery strikes in Afghanistan and the requirement for more bases and facilities to be built. (Disregard what people like Anthony Cordesman, who works for a think tank heavily funded by the defense industry, when they say things like new troops will utilize existing infrastructure in Afghanistan and not that much more extra money will be spent on the war with a troop increase. The generals always want more bases, because they always do; contractors always want to build more bases and sell more services; and there has not been an instance of per troop costs diminishing over the time of the conflict, only expanding – God forbid the journalists point these things out or ask the “experts” who are funded by the interests about which they are speaking to justify their assertions)

It is very simple: 4,000 more American soldiers to Afghanistan means more than $15 billion in spending for the Pentagon and defense industry.

In this interview with RT America, from August 31, 2017, I speak about the totality of American war policy, and there really is no other policy than the war policy, in the Middle East and Afghanistan and how the policies in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Somalia are linked and united under a common strategy that seeks military control or subjugation of the local population through collaborating and subservient allies and proxies. The brutal use of military force, particularly that which we have witnessed in Iraq and Yemen by the Iraqi and Saudi militaries, supported directly by American air forces and commandos, is the strategy that will be put in place in Afghanistan and is what the United States is utilizing with its three air bases in Kurdish controlled Syria and the Kurdish army. We have also seen an increase in this use of strategy and operations in Somalia, I expect Libya will see the same.

This strategy differs from the Bush II and Obama strategies as there is no consideration for a political end state or political control of the population. No such thing as elections, negotiations, economic development, no attempts at winning hearts and mind, only subjugation and punishment. Yes, the Bush II and Obama wars were immoral, un-winnable and counter-productive, but there was an attempt or desire to have a political end state. Under this administration, with the policy controlled by the three generals, Mattis, Kelly and McMaster, the end state is military control of areas not sympathetic to the government through massive fire power and the use of highly trained commandos as the focus of effort against the enemy and the local population. So, in effect, the Pashtun areas of southern, eastern and northern Afghanistan will become free fire zones with nightly kill/capture raids by commandos into villages and homes with subjugation, military control and punishment as the objectives of this violence and killing.

Finally, I did this interview with my friend Cat Watters. It’s been awhile since I’ve spoken with her. A very free ranging and relaxed interview which I really enjoyed doing, because Cat gets the emotions and humanity that underlay all of what I am talking about. Thanks Cat!

Update: 9/11/2017. Issa has been released. He has charges filed against him by the PA and so will have to go through the secret, sham and kangaroo court that the PA runs. This is in addition to the Israeli military trial he is currently enduring with 18 charges against him, charges that nearly all outside observers agree are baseless and absurd. The Israeli military court has a conviction rate of 99.7% for Palestinians. Thank you to everyone who called on his behalf.

Our friend in Palestine, Issa Amro, a Palestinian Human Rights advocate and non-violent community leader who is facing trial in an Israel military court, has been arrested by the Palestinian Authority.

I met Issa earlier this year in Palestine and I was awed by his leadership and his commitment to his people, to justice and to peace. You can read what I wrote about him here. You can read the details about Issa’s arrest from Peter Beinart and Ariel Gold. If you look at the top of my website you will see a photo of him in the streets of Hebron as the Israeli police and military fire at us.

A few months ago over thirty members of the US House of Representatives and four members of the US Senate wrote to the US State Department in defiance of Israel and on behalf of Issa. He has support throughout the world and that is why Israel and the Palestinian Authority see him as a threat.

PLEASE CALL THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES AND DEMAND THAT ISSA AMRO BE RELEASED

I have a benefit tonight that I am speaking at in support of Palestine. In the toast I am to give, I will reference other struggles against oppression and occupation, particularly those resistance struggles that I was grateful to be given the opportunity to stand with in solidarity this past year: in Okinawa, at Standing Rock and in Palestine.

For someone like me, who had professionally studied war and insurgencies for years, and then executed such knowledge on behalf of the US government in support of the occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, being on the other side of the rifle was heartbreaking and difficult, as seeing the military and police enforcing the racist occupations, political oppression and environmental destruction was a mirror held up to me, reflecting my own past, my own mistakes, my own collaboration with greed, hate and subjugation. Being allowed the opportunity to stand with these resistance movements was rewarding and it was healing, as it was a form of recovery for my moral injury and guilt from the wars. I can never undo or repair what I took part in in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I can, going forward in my life, live a life working with others for peace and justice, both at home and abroad.

Veterans For Peace members march in Hebron, Occupied West Bank, February 2016. Photo credit: Ellen Davidson, Veterans For PeaceMembers of Veterans For Peace and Palestinian Youth Against Settlements leader Issa Amro intercede with the Israeli police and military to stop firing in Hebron, Occupied West Bank, February 2017. Photo credit: Sabah Media

The commonness and similarities that exist between these resistance movements are many: a firm belief in and understanding of non-violence; the use of music and song; and the graciousness and openness to outsiders, like myself and other white veterans of the American military whose relationship to the occupation forces and powers cannot be ignored or dismissed, but are understood as the actions of the colonial and imperial powers and not the actions, will or soul of the individual soldier, or Marine in my case.

Veterans For Peace members and Okinawan resistance members block the road in Okinawa to protect the Yanbaru forest from US military construction, September 2016. Photo credit: Mike Hastie, Veterans For Peace.Members of Veterans For Peace and Okinawan resistance members resisting attempts by Japanese police to move them as they protect the Yanbaru forest from US military construction, September 2016. Photo credit: Mike Hastie, Veterans For Peace

There is also something that runs very deep, is very true, and that exists within all these resistance movements. Something prime and underlining, a force that is infinite and enduring is the intangible reality that exists in all of the men, women and children who are struggling for their society’s freedom, for the preservation of their land, water and air, and for the chance for their children and grandchildren to live lives not held in obeyance to the guns and violence of a foreign, abusive and repressive power. I have no other choice for my description of what I witnessed and stood among than to use the word divine to explain what it is that moves, sustains and carries forward these movements and people. Words like justice, peace, freedom, and safety have their well deserved places as descriptions of what these movements strive for, but it is the word divine that I come back to when I think of what it is which motivates, maintains and upholds these movements and what it is that links them together across continents, religions and races, and, ultimately, time.

Tarak Kauff and Matthew Hoh of Veterans For Peace participate in a non-violent action with Native American water protectors to block construction of the DAPL pipeline, October 2016. Photo credit: Ellen Davidson, Veterans For PeaceVeterans For Peace members Matthew Hoh and Tarak Kauff are arrested along with Native American water protectors while conducting a non violent action to block the DAPL pipeline, October 2016. Photo credit: Ellen Davidson, Veterans For Peace.

I saw this again in Charlottesville a few weeks ago, where myself and other white allies escorted black students from Howard University through the city streets. There was something divine, again a better word I stumble trying to find, behind the purposes of those students from Howard, a very existent and timeless connection to something beyond the human experience that animates our desires for truth, justice, equality and peace. This force, this beyond-human force, ties together these movements now, and ties them to the movements of the past, to their ancestors who suffered and were persecuted in their struggles of liberation, fights for peace, and marches for equality, whether there be a direct lineage of descent to those ancestors or an ancestry consisting of purpose and principle removed by epochs of historical and geographic separation.

I’m an intellectual, logical and rational atheist a good 6 1/2 days a week, but what I experienced in Okinawa, Standing Rock, Palestine and Charlottesville these past twelve months moved me with a force much greater than any and all of the spirited nationalist formulations or conceptions of brotherhood I ever encountered or beheld in my time as a Marine or while working for the US government. This force, this divine presence, cannot be discounted, diminished or dismissed, but is as factual and proven to me in its effect and purpose as any rifle I ever held, any money I was ever paid, or any exceptionalist American myth I ever consumed.

It is why anyone who has taken part in these movements can receive healing from their own sins in war, as I have; it is why even those who have been silenced by jailing or with bullets and bombs have never truly been defeated – lost to us with great sorrow and grief, yes, of course – but not defeated; and it is why these movements will ultimately be successful, because the divine that is the foundation of these movements and these people cannot be extinguished, cannot be undone, bought or quieted, as this spirit will always carry forward this generation and subsequent ones.

To see and understand some of the divine involvement that is present in the people of Palestine and the Palestinian Popular Resistance movement, please watch Chris Smiley’s latest video of the Veterans For Peace delegation I participated in to Palestine earlier this year.